20070707

Four pages of fragile, slightly-bug-eaten operating instructions from a gorgeous Pascaline-style calculator I have. These instructions offer a great insight into the variety of different operations possible on a device that looks deceptively simple at first glance. The Smallwood adds numbers like most other Pascaline-type calculators and the sum appears in a row of "answer" windows. The subtraction operation is unusual for avoiding the "answer" windows entirely and instead using a secondary indicator on the rotating dials themselves. The passages on "correcting errors," "guards against interruptions," and "to tabulate two items at the same time" highlight some of less-obvious features of this model. The instructions for multiplying and dividing on the Smallwood are particularly interesting since these Pascaline calculators are often thought of as only "adding machines."